Think about what your practice question is that you want to ask. It's good to meet with a teacher, especially during Sashim. So, my subject, at least for today, since it's Sashim, we like to keep to basics. And so I wanted to talk about Shikantaza. And as I have been doing for the last year and a half or so, I've been digging into some of Sojin Roshi's talks and finding ones that seem to me really relevant to the moment and very much as he did with the talks of his teacher, and to quote from them, to take off on them to explore.

[01:12]

And, you know, you, you see the wisdom that's carried forward in our, in our practice. So, first, I just wanted to say a little about the word Shikantaza. And it's attributed to Dogen's teacher, to Ujing, which literally means nothing but sitting or just sitting. And Dogen says, in other words, single-minded sitting or doing it wholeheartedly. And Shikantaza is the is this Sino-Japanese rendering of Zhirguan, which means also only concentrated with or simply only focusing on sitting meditation.

[02:19]

And it's the mark of Shikantaza is the mark of the Soto school. And that's often placed in contrast to the Koan study, Koan introspection method of the Rinzai school. In reality, they're not so different. But in emphasis, there are some differences. So just sitting is the term that Ruching developed from the teaching of Hongju who used the term silent illumination. Silent illumination in Japanese is and what Hongju kind of

[03:29]

The premise of his teaching was that this method of meditation, the shikantaza that we do, is the integration of the two elements of meditation that we hear about in traditional teachings. We hear about shamatha, the calming of the mind, and the pashanya, which is insight. insightful contemplation. And those two, the integration of those two, which in earlier meditation approaches, were seen as stages to some extent. And still, if you go to, you know, if you go to a Goenka Vipassana retreat, They begin with shamaka, so basically to build your concentration, and then at a certain point, meditation shifts to vipashana.

[04:41]

But with us, we don't separate these things. So it's all silent illumination or shikantaza. And just to say, there's a... In his wonderful translation of Hongzhu, Taigen Leighton writes about, he describes the methodology of silent meditation. And he calls it a non-dual objectless meditation. And then I'm going to quote him. This involves withdrawal from an exclusive focus on a particular sensory or mental object to allow the apprehension of all phenomena as a unified totality.

[05:43]

So what you could say, the expression that I use is concentrate on everything, which of course is a one of those conundrums like save all sentient beings. But just open your mind to this complete receptivity. So, with that as a kind of modest background, I want to look at this talk of Sojan Roshis. He says, we call our practice Shikantaza, which means something like just to sit. To just do, just sit means acting without self or ego or some extra purpose.

[06:55]

This is just, this is the opposite of a materialistic way of life. Much of our usual effort is materialistic, to have or to accumulate or to improve. Shikantaza is the other side, to be. But when we practice to be, sometimes our materialistic side, desire, raises questions like, where is this going? What do I get from this? Where's the reward? So those are, he says, those are natural questions to ask. And I feel like they're particularly the territory of day one of Sashin. Day one of Sashin is like sitting here, making a shift from our usual way of life

[08:00]

to this very moderate and regulated way of life. And very often, during the first day, the question comes up, what am I doing here? You know, because we're not so comfortable in this transition. But I believe one of the great advantages of Sashin is just to have faith in the process of Zazen and to enter it and to observe how we become settled and how that question kind of fades away. And we don't have to worry about it, you know, if we think Even if we feel there's some urgency, when Sashin is over, somewhere later, those questions are going to come back anyway.

[09:12]

But here, we're not actually trying to accomplish something. We're just actually trying to be. Sojin says, it's enough just to be. If you can settle on just being, you can experience your completeness. But if self-centered desire takes over, we are easily pulled off our seat. He says, often we get bored in Zazen because we're not getting or accomplishing anything in our usual materialistic sense. I'm not sure that's all of it. You know... Maybe that's a good way to put it. It's also, we get bored because we're not giving ourselves some candy.

[10:15]

We're not giving ourselves something to do, and we're not used to not doing in the worldly sense of things. And so, actually, I just have to say, Boredom was one of my demons for maybe the first half of my life. You know, just, and it was, I think it was essentially nothing was interesting enough to hold my attention. And also because underneath that was a sense that I felt I was supposed to be doing something and I didn't know what hell it was. And I can say, I realized that at a certain point, not so long into my practice, I was never bored.

[11:31]

anymore. I really am not. I may get weary in Zazen, but that's not boredom. And, you know, so I have things that would be, could be incredibly boring, like waiting for a plane that's been delayed in the airport, you know, and so you're just sitting there, you know, what am I supposed to be doing? Or, or just being inactive. just, it's fine. I noticed that, you know, I noticed this even this morning, when I went up to use the restroom after the first period of Zasa and I sat down for a moment at the kitchen table and the sun was warmly coming through the window. and shining on the table, and it was shining on the salt shaker and this little jar of Japanese pepper that Genpo has.

[12:42]

And I just felt, oh, wow, how luminous. You know, it was just, it was doing nothing, but it wasn't boring. So I don't know. I don't know how many of you experience zazen as boring. Maybe, maybe you do, and if you do, that's okay, you have to deal with it. The surgeon says, often we get bored in zazen because we're not getting or accomplishing anything in our usual materialistic sense. We feel we have to have some justification for being alive. And then the next sentence is also interesting to me. He says, when we first come to Zazen, we don't know why we like it. You know, maybe when we first come to Zazen, for me, I can't say they didn't know why I liked it, because I'm not sure I liked it.

[13:53]

The question was, We don't know, I didn't know why I was doing it, but I had faith in that. Like, liking zazen takes some depth of practice to arrive at. When I was practicing at zooliology in Shikoku, Japan, the Tanta was introduced to us one day, he was somebody from outside the temple. And, you know, he made his statement to us by way of introduction was, nobody likes Zazen, but we have to do it. And, you know, some of us at that point, you know, we like Zazen.

[14:55]

You know, we're not doing this because we have to. So, in a deeper sense, I think Sojit's right. When we first come to Sasa, we don't know why we like it. There's something in it that we intuitively and deeply know is feeding us. And even though it's difficult, even though it's painful, We trust that process. So, he says, if it feels right, it feels right because it's just enough. It's enough just to be. If we can settle on just being in that way, in all of our activity, then whatever we do is asen. Shikantaza, just sitting, is just doing something without any gaining idea, as Suzuki Roshi used to say.

[16:02]

So Shikantaza is a total offering, holding nothing back, merging completely, sitting at the kitchen table, looking at those mundane things in front of me, it was just this, it was emerging. And it wasn't anything special. It was very ordinary. But it was the oneness of all the things within the field of awareness that I was experiencing. All the things in the field of awareness that was being experienced, let me leave I out of it.

[17:10]

So it says, you need to rediscover how to practice over and over again so that our effort stays fresh and we don't fall back into the realm of craving. We have to live our life in the world of desire. We have to do that and at the same time to be free from it. We're not going to get rid of this desire. We don't even want necessarily to get rid of the desire. But what we want to do is to find a way to be free within it. to engage in selfless activity, to not point everything back to I or me or mine. When we're engaged in selfless activity, our samadhi, our concentration is very strong, and we can enjoy pure activity more than we enjoy selfish activity.

[18:25]

In sesshin or long sitting, we talk about to unify the mind or to embrace mind. That's actually the meaning of the word sesshin, to touch the mind. Strictly speaking, sesshin is five days or seven days. One day is not usually called seshi. We call it one day sitting. But whether one day sitting, seven day sitting, or five day sitting, or I would say even our daily zazen, the principle is the same. The unified body, breath, and mind. Those three elements, which we can enlarge on in another talk. we realize the basic unity of body and mind with the whole universe.

[19:40]

That's what's meant by unifying the mind. Mind is already one with things, but we just need to realize it or to remind or reestablish our balance and harmony continuously. So now we get to the central point, central teaching in this lecture. It is necessary to find our balance in each moment. What I mean by balance is to take into account and to be aware of all the forces that are active in our body and mind in any given moment. For instance, when we sit zazen, gravity is one great force acting on our body.

[20:41]

Another great force is what I call spirit, which keeps our body upright. These are the two counteracting forces or polarities of our life, the pull towards the earth and the pull away from the earth. The earth pulls everything towards it. That's the force of gravity. And we say we're grounded in the earth. We have to have this grounding, you know, our feet on the ground to know where your feet are, to feel, to allow gravity to create that bond with the ground and with the earth itself. Or in a tree. to allow that tree, or to allow any growing thing, whether you can, from a sequoia to a blade of grass, it cannot stand, it cannot live unless it is in alignment with gravity, unless it has its roots in the ground.

[22:06]

So that's the grounded side. But the counterforce, the counterforce of vital spirit is pushing us up, or it's pulling us up. So the tree, the blade of grass, or us just standing, or us sitting as we're doing now, we're, lifting from the ground, building from the ground up, we're lifting towards the sky. So that's the spirit side is what lifts us. The spirit is some, you know, formless entity. And, you know, you think about being alive, just to be alive, means to be able to sit up, stand up.

[23:12]

And when that spirit departs, you can't stand. There's nothing, there's no way to stand. When we take our last breath, there's no way to reach for the heavens from that place. When we sit, Sojin says, when we sit Zaza the whole time, from the beginning to end of our long sitting, we're dealing single-mindedly with the problem of spirit and gravity. I'm not sure whether it's a problem, it's a dynamic tension. To sit upright,

[24:14]

and not to lean to the left or to the right, not to lean forward, not to lean back, just to be comfortable. How do you sit all day without leaning forward or backward? You know, I really reckon with this through the first two periods of Zazen. There's something, because my knees are messed up and don't let me, don't allow me to sit cross-legged sitting in a chair. And it's hard. The force of gravity is... I find it harder to counter in a way in a chair than when I was sitting cross-legged. So I'm always thinking about this. So this is part of the... those three elements of body, breath and mind, in order to allow breath and mind to be free, I have to find out where to apply just enough energy in relation to gravity as I sit in this chair.

[25:33]

So Sashim is to struggle with this problem until finally We stop struggling and we allow spirit to find complete unity with gravity. What do we need to know in order to be able to deal in this way with the problems of gravity and spirit? Recently, I've been talking about how we keep time with our chanting, how we follow the rhythm, and at the same time, create the rhythm, push, or push the rhythm, how we follow and lead at the same time. This is very interesting to me. At some point, quite a few years ago, a friend of mine was was talking about

[26:41]

kind of the essential dynamics of music that I played. In this particular, the essential dynamic of bluegrass music, which is an acoustic music that doesn't have a drummer. That's significant. When you have a drummer, it's like, well, we have the Makugyo. it's really easy to know where the beat is, if the drummer's any good. Sometimes they're not so good. They're pretty good here, but it's like, there's something about, there's like, they're drummer jokes, but we won't get into them. But in bluegrass music, everybody has a part. And you are collectively responsible for keeping the beat.

[27:49]

And the beat is really important. And sometimes it's really hard because the tempos are very fast. And the timing is subtle. But what my friend said was, everybody in the ensemble is responsible for maintaining and creating the time of that particular piece of music. So, you know, I could explain this to you what the various roles of the, of the, of the, the instruments are because each has, each has a piece of the rhythm. But, but it's an, each has an essential piece that keeps time, but it keeps the time just, just as Sojourn was saying here by following, by leading and following at the same time.

[28:53]

That the following means you're keeping the time, you're attuned to this inner clock and you're listening to what's going on all around us. So we're always doing this in our chanting. You know, the Time is usually pretty good. The pitch. You know, sometimes it varies because of our energy. But when we're really listening, it's really on the mark. It's not not that everybody has to have the same pitch. But everybody has to have the intention to blend. Huh? So what Sojin says is, you come to a place where there's no gap, there's no following and there's no leading.

[29:55]

Then to lead is to follow and to follow is to lead. And of course, without losing the unity, he says we can sometimes emphasize leading and we can sometimes emphasize following. But there must always be a balance in this unity. The example, this example of chanting can be taken into every situation, every situation in our life. So when you're leaving the chant with the Mukugyo, one necessary thing is to listen. The other is to lead, to activate yourself. So this is exactly what my friend was telling me about our responsibility in an ensemble. And I will say that, you know, playing music, I feel was kind of the elemental training that it was really important training that I had before I came here.

[30:58]

And I am so grateful for it. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to continue to do that from time to time. When receiving and responding is one unit without a gap, we say there's no subject, no object. Chanting chants, sitting sits. The unity illuminates both subject and object. Exhaling, we give into gravity. Inhaling, we reach for the sky. In one complete breath, There's the unity of birth and death. So then he continues, he's elaborating on this point that he's making about gravity and spirit. He says zazen has two sides.

[32:03]

One is the passive side and the other is the active side. The passive side corresponds to awareness. or being attentive, just letting things come and go. So that's what I've been talking about when I talk about just opening your senses and being receptive to whatever it is that you're perceiving, whether you're seeing it, or you're hearing that airplane go by right now. Just Just receiving it and letting that plane fly across the sky and disappear. Just letting things come and go. The active side is the purposeful effort of body and mind. Fully engaged in upright posture, total exertion and focus.

[33:06]

So this is the active side is how we work with our posture. How we are minutely making corrections from moment to moment. So we say we're sitting in stillness, but the stillness includes activity and the activity includes stillness. So the balance of this Passive side and active side is what we're continuously working with. The passive side allows for all difficulties. It's opening completely to everything without trying to block anything and without trying to inhibit the difficulties and problems.

[34:07]

The active side, oh, I think the battery just died in this. You can hear me though, right? Yeah. Let's see, I can just talk a little louder if that's okay, because we're still recording. The passive side allows for all difficulties. It's opening completely to everything without trying to block anything, not holding to anything. The active side is the spirit of determination. That's the spirit of like, well, how am I sitting right now? You know, am I slumped? Am I upright? The active, it's the form side with which we maintain our posture. With the active side, we maintain our attitude of constancy, checking on our activity, returning to our original intention over and over again.

[35:22]

The passive side goes along with gravity, while the active side provides the pull away from gravity, giving us a form which allows spirit to be fully expressed. You know, it takes some effort to stand up. It takes some effort to sit upright. It takes some effort that we can't understand for the great redwoods and sequoias to reach as high as they do. We can't understand the effort of a tree necessarily, but it's holding itself up. at every moment. I often think about, you know, there's a huge palm tree in front of the old Dwight Wei Zendo.

[36:26]

People seen that? It's really big, you know, and in any kind of, it's like, it's like probably 150 feet tall or something like that. It's really big. And it's like, whenever the wind comes, it's swaying. It's like, I swear, how does it hold itself up? You know, you just think of the wind as, whoa, here we go. No, I'm going to go the other way. It's doing this constantly. Moment after moment, day after day, year after year, it's been doing that for at least 50 years. What? What is the mind of a tree? What is the spirit of a tree? It's really good to be like the tree. So when an emotion comes that, you know, it pushes us in one direction or another. And then we just, we move back towards, because we're grounded, we can move back towards the center.

[37:36]

And, we may go a little further, we're constantly finding that center balance point. That is the way spirit and gravity work together. It's expressed in our posture in Zazen, and also it's expressed in our mind, and how we live in our life. The unity between the active and the passive, between gravity and spirit, the basic unity between all things is always there. The way to express this harmony is in Zazen. When we sit today, we should make that effort to close the gap. Oh, here he says what I just said.

[38:38]

Within the total activity is total stillness. Within that stillness is total dynamic activity. Not I am sitting zazen, but just this sitting. So it's important, he closes this piece as Sojan often did by emphasizing, he says, putting attention on posture is the most important. How is this mudra? Is it being held right? Is the back correct, given our limitations? Are our ears in line with our shoulders? Nose in line with the navel? Is the chest open? Are the shoulders relaxed? At the end of this lecture, he says, let your shoulders fall.

[39:39]

Your shoulders don't hold you up. If the crown of the palm tree was what was holding the tree up, it wouldn't work. The tree has to be held up all the way through its trunk. What kind of effort is needed to hold you up? Where is the fine line, which is just balance? When we find that balance, that harmony, then total effort seems effortless. So as we move more deeply into Sashim, notice how that balance is manifesting for you. Appreciate it. And notice how it's arising for those around you.

[40:40]

and appreciate their effort and their accomplishment, our accomplishment together and our mutual support for each other in this activity. Doing it together, making this effort together is the, is what Sashin is all about. So with that, I'm going to stop and leave a little time for questions. And what I suggest is if you're online and you have a question, raise your digital hand so I can see it. Actually, I can see everybody who's not got their video off. But use the digital hand, if you will. And I'll first take... questions or comments in the room here? Yeah, so Eiko?

[41:56]

Well, I'm very interested in trees, not just because I'm a carpenter, but because I spend a lot of time climbing and looking in them and the mind of a tree You know, when a tree's branch stops getting sun, the tree sends tar to the base of that branch and cuts off the water flow so that that branch will die. It's self-cutting. The mind of the tree going against gravity goes very straight. But I want to ask you, because the force is consistent and the tree's spirit is raising, I love the way you put it, you see trees that are in the wind. Now they are going straight by nature, but they're also, their mind is really dominated or contributed to by the presence of the wind force. And so they tend to grow in a very different way than the Sequoia. Can you speak to the different forces and how that shapes us as well as trees?

[42:57]

Well, I think it's just like us, you know, some of us are, are shaped and bent by the forces that act upon us. Within that particular configuration, whether it's us or the tree, we still have our upright posture. It just may not appear upright in some pure way. You know, so, yeah, I mean, some trees, which are exposed to, say, a constant wind in one direction, are going to be shaped in response to that. And the same thing is true of us, as people, I think. But still, they stand their fundamental effort is to, is to be upright.

[43:59]

Yeah. Can we understand our uprightness? What? Can we understand our own uprightness and though it doesn't look like other trees, so to speak? That's our responsibility. That's what we have to do. And we have to ask ourselves, how, you know, am I upright? Am I in harmony with my surroundings? With the other beings around? Am I able to fit that? Not am I conventionally perfect. Thank you. Other questions? Sue? What would you say about the roots? they're essential.

[45:07]

The roots are, if there's no roots, there's no life. The roots are drawing, first of all, they are, first they're drawing nutrients. They grow to provide nutrition to the whole being. And at the same time, they're providing stability by having a hold within the earth. If the roots are shallow, a tree in the wind is going to fall over. Thank you. I seem to be aware of how much I don't pay attention to roots. myself and that there's something there's something down there that i can trust and it feels very good when that awareness arises trying to remember i read a book i know there's a book called over story i think i read a book called the under story about is that right does anyone know that it was like all about life under the earth which is just

[46:35]

incredibly complex and absolutely essential. But I was thinking about routes, you know, so guys from city of Berkeley maintenance crew was out on our block yesterday or day before, and they put, they were putting some patches on the broken concrete in front of our house. And it's, you know, it's where the roots were creeping under really quite extensive, extensively distant from the tree. And then, so there's another aspect, which whole other talk, I think, of a forest as a community, of the interrelationship, the intertwining of all these roots and of actual, a kind of organic communication that takes place between, between trees and plants, which is, you know, pretty amazing.

[47:51]

That's, but, and this is, this is also, I think a, a live metaphor for us about our community, how our roots are entwined with each other, and how we depend upon each other to live. And, you know, we have this wonderful model to enact here. Sashin is that. Sangha is that. It's community within community. So we're very fortunate. Yeah, I'll take one more. Anything online? Yes, Peter has a question. Peter. Oh, one second.

[48:55]

Try again. Peter, you have to say something. Oh, Jesus. One second. Can I hear you now? Peter, I think you need to unmute. You need to unmute, Peter. You're muted. You're actually muted. I can see. But you're not able to unmute. Is that what you're saying? uh who uh carol are you can you unmute him peter you want to put it in the chat i'm sorry i can i don't think i can this is the problem we were having earlier you may be able to unmute him i may be able to unmute you look in the top right corner top right corner of his of his little triangle of his little square

[50:04]

Hang on. Oh, participants. Okay. It says, it says, ask to unmute. Okay. Yes. I've been thinking about your comments about the active side. which is to take care of our upright posture in all its details and with some consistency and it does take some effort. But I'm also noticing that one of the places where I lose my effort is when I'm not paying attention, when I'm not putting energy and effort into maintaining awareness of what's going on around me in me. Right. So there's some effort associated with the passive side, which is complimentary to the effort of maintaining your upright posture.

[51:12]

Did you hear that? Yeah, I think that that's true. And I also think that just from my own experience of aging, things that I did not have to pay attention to, I now really have to pay attention to. In terms of physical activity, I'm sure you're experiencing that also, right? Yes. Yeah. It's like every time I bow here, you know, I really have to think about how I'm moving my body, how I'm taking care of my knees, what my form is. You know, it's like before I just throw myself up and throw myself down and jump up. It's like, that ain't happening anymore. I know, but you guys. But yes, so this balance is constantly shifting. That's the thing. It's always shifting and we need to be attuned to it. There's no steady state in which we're just locked down on that.

[52:18]

Zazen, that's the thing about Zazen. Zazen is not a steady state. Zazen is a state of total dynamic Activity, always adjusting. So I think that's where we will end for today. I believe tomorrow, Jerry is going to give the Dharma talk and Friday, Shuso Gary is going to give the talk. So I'm looking forward to both of those and I'm looking forward to sitting for these next days. So thank you. Beings are numberless.

[53:04]

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